In March 2024 the International Trade Centre and UN Women launched a Global Campaign on Gender-Responsive Public Procurement. Gender-responsive procurement encourages public entities to leverage purchasing opportunities to promote gender equality and go beyond a conventional cost-management focus. In supporting this campaign, Australia has committed to collect gender-disaggregated data on all procurements by 2026. To achieve this, the Government has proposed to ‘establish a new voluntary Commonwealth supplier registration process within AusTender to identify women-owned and led businesses.’ This Flagpost provides a brief overview of measures to encourage gender equality in the context of Government procurement.

Initiatives supporting gender equality

The 2024–25 Budget (p 162) allocated $60.1 million to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) for several priorities, including implementing Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality. This included working with the Department of Finance to upgrade AusTender (the government’s procurement information system). As further outlined in the Women’s Budget statement (p 83), the new registration process will support data collection on how self-nominated women-owned and led businesses interact with Government procurement. This data will reportedly build ‘the evidence base on the experiences of women owned and led businesses.’

Importantly, this new information would not be used to discriminate in favour of (or against) any business, as such discrimination is explicitly prohibited by the Commonwealth Procurement Rules (CPRs) in paragraph 5.4. However, media commentary has noted the register’s lack of specific targets, and advocated for more investment to support women-owned and led businesses to upscale.

Procurement Connected Policies (PCPs)

Since 2013 the Workplace Gender Equality Procurement Principles have required that suppliers with 100 or more employees in Australia show compliance with the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (WGE Act) when tendering for contracts over a certain threshold. However, variable compliance and enforcement of this Procurement Connected Policy (PCP) led to a review of the WGE Act, released in December 2021. The report identified scope to strengthen the PCP’s obligations for employers to report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). The report also recommended a review of the Workplace Gender Equality Procurement Principles, which commenced in August 2023.

In March 2024, Minister for Women, Finance and the Public Service, Katy Gallagher, announced the Government’s intention to strengthen the gender equality PCP, through mandating that businesses with 500 or more employees meet new targets. These targets include governing body and workforce gender composition, equal remuneration, flexible and care-friendly work arrangements, workplace consultation on gender equality, and efforts to prevent and address sexual harassment. Businesses that meet these targets would receive a WGEA certificate of compliance, allowing them to bid for government contracts. As reported, Minister Gallagher said ‘we are using our purchasing power to leverage other outcomes that we want to see across government’.

In a related Budget measure (p 94), the Department of Workplace Relations received $10.6 million over 4 years to implement a reporting solution for the new Skills Guarantee Procurement Connected Policy. Beginning on 1 July 2024, this policy introduces targets for apprentices working on government funded major projects, and specifically for women employed in historically male-dominated industries.

Policy research into gender-responsive procurement

Since its establishment in late 2012, the WGEA has published extensively on workplace gender equality, including gender-responsive procurement. For example, in 2020 its Gender equitable procurement and supply chains report outlined various gender-equitable procurement models, including identifying women-owned businesses and encouraging gender equality from suppliers. The report also investigated overseas examples in identifying gender issues within the supply chain.

The Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce (chaired by Sam Mostyn, prior to being appointed Governor-General) also identified government procurement reform as a key driver of women’s economic equality. The taskforce’s findings further informed the National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality released in 2024.

The United Nations has published a corporate guide on gender-responsive procurement, to support signatories of the Women’s Empowerment Principles. The OECD and International Trade Centre have also published public governance research papers, with the latter estimating that public procurement constitutes 10–15% of developed countries’ GDP and up to 40% for developing countries. However, only 1% of government contracts go to women-owned businesses.

Government access to improved gender-responsive procurement data will likely inform further policy initiatives and signal further focus on procurement's broader social impacts. Accordingly, this will be a growing area of interest for researchers and policy-makers going forward in Australia and overseas.